Together, Unbroken
by winteress2712
Summary: A story centering around Arthur, Dom and Zosia's friendship. Will their friendship be able to last the test of time when life threatens to tear them apart? Combines Arthur's GAD/cancer storyline, Dom's domestic abuse storyline and Zosia's recent pregnancy storyline.
1. Chapter 1

**CHAPTER ONE**

DOMINIC

MAY, 23

 _"_ _It was December 2nd 1804. Within three years Napoleon's conquest would extend his Empire across almost all of Europe, and he would rule over 70 million people. Not since the Ancient Caesars had one man held so much power..."_

The words echoed, facts and useless bits of knowledge pouring out from the television screen in form of sound waves, flying past my ears before they had a chance to absorb into my brain like a peregrine soaring in spring, preying on pigeons and waterfowl.

Under less unfortunate circumstances, I would not have been seen dead, or rather flat lining on the table dressed in tight berry-coloured leather spandex scrubs listening to Metalicca, sitting here perched on the edge of the cream cushioned sofa in our little flat, trying to engage in a documentary that I had, after all, much less than little care for. This particular documentary, as tiresome as any that didn't centre around the likes of Amy Winehouse, detailed the life of French military and political leader Napoleon Bonaparte. The best thing about it? This was only part one of a four part documentary series.

It had only been around this time last year, when I had been involuntarily 'coerced' into watching a documentary series about a Revolutionary War ship, that I found myself subconsciously either tearing or biting apart my fingernails, tapping out silent yet rhythmatical tunes on the soft fabric of the arm rest, or reflecting upon the sad, never-ending number of previously failed relationships in my current thirty-years-or-so miserable existence. In this, let us call it desperate-state-of-boredom, I was simply just doing anything to distract my mind from the painful endurance that it took for the minutes to crawl by and for the monotonous task of hearing fact after fact after fact to be over. You see, the thing about documentary series such as these, is that, yes they are educational, but for people like me, or perhaps to phrase it better, for people who do not share an enthusiasm for revolutionary leaders such as Garibaldi and Napolean himself, there is only so much Napoleanic history the mind can take. And anyway, if I had wanted to torture myself in this way, then I could have spent the afternoon treating a patient for a fractured toe or talking to Hanssen about the history of Swedish delicacy and cuisine.

But yet, as we sat here now, gently resting elbow-to-elbow, our brains somehow engaged by this wearisome bundle of tripe, I did not once have to fight the urge to picture myself as being somewhere, anywhere away from here, whether that be elbow-deep in the midst of a large bowel resection or being forced by Sacha to work on bariatrics. Rather I found myself trapped, deep in thought, alone with Diggers (and Napoleon) in our flat, which no longer felt homely, but as if our flat was an infected lung and all of the life and hope had been suctioned out of it during an attempt to clear any excess fluid from its airways. It felt different, and I didn't know why or how but it was whilst alone in the company of Diggers that I noticed a pain that I had never quite felt before. My heart ached, but it was a dull kind of ache. The kind that you pray may go away in time, without the need for input of any self-care measure method or treatment. The kind that wasn't necessarily debilitating, or that would leave you weak, begging on your knees for the strongest painkiller that there is, but powerful enough to notice and cause flashes of disturbance and pain. It was difficult to explain, but with every minute that went by I felt a silent, recurring pain of emptiness wash over my aching body. I had felt this way ever since Arthur's diagnosis. Melonoma. Secondaries in his stomach and lungs, even in despite of a long and grueling, tough course of chemotherapy. The truth was, as much as I did not want to admit it, Arthur was my closest friend and my time with him was running out.

I had made a personal promise to myself that from then on, not a moment spent with Diggers would be wasted. So I would coo as he made Norse-God Medallions out of old bits of copper, sit through five episodes worth of French Revolutionary history without complaining, eat his homemade shortbread biscuits even though I had eaten better tasting slop from out of a can, even if the boredom, the endurance, this inner uncharacteristical mode of kindness killed me.

I was watching the screen, partially disengaged, yet left half-admiring, I'm ashamed to admit, the fact that it was Napolean's Army that first discovered the Rosetta Stone, when I felt the side of Arthur's head brush gently across my shoulder and land, resting against my upper forearm. I glanced down at the side of his pale face. He seemed a bit drowsy and heavy-eyed behind his glasses. His eyelids I noticed, kept on closing shut before jerking back open in accordance with his head rising and falling conventionally in time with the heightened notes of Étienne Nicolas Méhul's _Stratonise_ as Napoleon was about to go to War with Russia.

"Diggers," I said, gently shaking his right arm, perhaps a little too softly, as if I were almost subconsciously afraid that rattling him any harder would break him, "wake up. You're not leaving me to watch this on my own."

He stirred, steadily pulling his body back up into an upright position before peering back at the screen. "It's okay," he said tugging at his cottoned-sleeves as he stretched his arms out in front of him, "I've already seen this about four times already". He pulled his glasses away from his face, folding them and placing them down on to the coffee table.

My face shifted into a look of transparent offense and resentment. "You don't honestly mean to tell me that you've put me through all of this for nothing. Do you know just about how much trauma you've caused to my brain?"

He was rubbing at his eyes with the back of his knuckles."Trauma? And what kind of trauma would that be then?"

"Emotional. Physical. Call it boredom-ical."

"Boredom-ical?" His cheeks rose into a half-ish kind of smile, before dropping slightly as he let his head fall lightly into his palms. I could hear him sniggering softly underneath his breath but with struggle, as if his body was fighting that much to keep itself awake that it made every other little action or thing feel like it was running a marathon."Right. And I'm assuming that you're going to be needing professional intervention to get through this rather traumatic experience?"

"Yes actually, and so will you."

He looked back up at me, as his sunken face reappeared from resting against the surface of his palms. "Me? No I'm rather quite enjoying this actually."

I sighed softly into my chest, only it sounded a lot more rough and jagged than I had intended. As I went to talk, I felt the words get caught in the back of my mouth just before emittance, as if the small lump that had now developed in my throat was acting as a bouncer, and restraining any words that had been resting in my mouth from being vocalised. I swallowed deeply and abruptly, jolting my body in the process, and for a few minutes we found ourselves sitting still, in what would have been silence had it not been for the Napoleon documentary still playing distantly in the background. "I think we both know that I'm not talking about the documentary Diggers," I eventually said, after minutes figuring what was and what wasn't the right thing to say in this moment.

He glanced up at me with sad, knowing eyes, before looking away as if I had hurt him. I noticed that his previously tired breathing had become slightly choppy, as if it kept stopping and starting in time with the rattling pulsations of his heart. "You mean to say that you're talking about the c..."

"Look, I get that you're a doctor and you have to watch people face this kind of thing every day, but watching somebody getting struck down by a train is different from actually being hit yourself."

He turned to look back at me, and as he did, I slowly closed my eyes, and held them there for a couple of seconds, as if not having to look at him staring at me that helplessly, would make all of this go away. Of course I knew it wouldn't.

"I don't need help Dom. Honestly, I'm fine."

"Well, I wish I could believe that." I caught him fidgeting with his fingers, like you do in most awkward situations, when you can't quite comprehend what's happening, and can't quite figure out how to pull yourself out of them and back into reality.

"Look, I know that you and Zosia seem to think that I need to be wrapped up in a blanket of cotton wool and just left there as This... the cancer slowly eats me alive until there's nothing left but you really don't have to be here if you don't want to."

"Arthur, I don't think that, okay? I just think that, you know, if you're not really fine like you say you are, then that there would be nothing wrong with that."

"And what about you?" He stared at me, his face still but eyes wandering as if they were searching for answers, and could find them just from reading the expressionless hurt in my face.

I felt my body tense as he shifted the attention from himself onto me. I shrugged my shoulders mildly at him."Me?" I answered blankly, before smiling at him, not because I was happy or because any part of this was okay for either one of us, but because I had no true answers to give.

He elaborated."Sitting here with me on your day off, when you could be spending time with Isaac, watching documentaries about Napoleon as if you actually care about the great extent of his empire. This isn't you Dom."

We found ourselves sitting still again, neither one of us saying anything to the other. And suddenly, in this partial never-ending silence between us, I could feel that the endless droning of the documentary voiceover was making me turn irritable, and was causing a figmental, pulsating headache to develop in the side of my head. With one hand remaining clutched on the left side of my skull as I tried to encourage the pain away with a massaging hand, I reached for the remote control that lay in a diagonal position on the coffee table, next to where Arthur's glasses were still resting. I glanced at Diggers, who was staring, eyes not particularly focused on anything, in the open space in front of him as my finger lay hovering over the off button.

"Right, I think that's enough of that." I said, relieving myself of the tedious voiceover man by pressing down firmly on the button that was marked clearly with the off sign. "Shouldn't you be thinking of getting off to your support group soon anyway?"

"You do realise I wasn't actually serious about going to that thing right? I just did it to reassure Sacha that I was okay. I didn't want him to be left there worrying about me." He pulled his knees that were bordered with the thin cotton from his pyjama trousers gently up into his chest.

"Look you promised Sacha that you would go and I think it would be good for you to meet other people that are going through... are under similar circumstances that you are. Not just patients and names, but People; maybe even friends. Do you really want to spend the rest of your days stuck with only a bunch of losers to call friends? I mean Zosia, a Swede and a middle-aged registrar, turned acting-consultant who thinks he's a teddy bear and wears flowery shirts that not even 1920s wallpaper can compete wi-."

"And yourself."

"And myself..." I paused, briefly turning away from Diggers and towards the kitchen counter, noticing that the kitchen tap had perhaps been dripping all along and neither one of us had even noticed it. "Look, if you're not willing to go for him, then at least do it for me, even if I have to drag you there by that granddad jumper of yours myself."

"You're not coming with me to a support group on your day off Dom," he said, tracing the outline of his pale ankle bone with his index finger.

"Well maybe that's not up to you." I said this with an unexpectedly authoritative tone.

"I'm being serious. The amount of time you've spent with me and cancer, these past couple of months. It's not fair. Look, Zosia should be back in about four hours or so. Why don't you go and spend some time with Isaac." I caught him wriggling the toes on his left foot, as if he was feeling restless and fidgety, and couldn't bring it upon himself to sit still, even though deep down, his body was probably yearning for sleep.

"Because, maybe this is more important," I said, responding in the most empathetically understanding tone that I could manage.

"I know it is Dom, and I will go to one. Just not today." He looked down at his knees, and as he did so, I did too to my own lap. It was as if neither one of us would allow ourselves to look at the hurt on the other's face, because we just couldn't handle it, and having to face it head on like this made it feel all the more real. The thing is, we were both in denial of the whole thing, even if neither one of us wanted to admit it.

"Promise me you will."

"Only if you promise to not spend the rest of the day sat here babysitting me on the sofa." He reached for my hand, pulling it closer towards his side, and I allowed him too. His grip was loose and his hand was thin and soft.

"I promise." I felt his grip tighten, as if with genuine love, friendship and reassurance.

"Well, then."


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note: ** I would just like to say a quick thank you to anybody who took the time to read, review, follow/favourite the previous chapter :)! It means so much to me that people appear to have been enjoying my work! I hope you guys enjoy the next chapter! xox

 **CHAPTER TWO**

ARTHUR

MAY, 30

There were a couple of things that I had noticed when I woke up at little past 4AM this morning, with my semi-slumbered body spread out across the sofa like a hung-over, comatose angel at what Dom would have called a blasphemous, wrongful hour, before I realised that I had once again failed to make it to my bed before passing out and drifting off into the senseless land of dreaming. The first thing I felt, as I nuzzled my drowsy face into the irregular fabric of the sofa cushion, was this indistinct twingeing in the side of my neck, a familiar pain I often found myself with when failing to provide enough support to the back of my head and neck before resting. The second unwelcomed discovery, a neat puddle of drool that had already begun filtering itself through the rugged cushion cover, and had left my right cheek feeling damp and lightly cooled.

The flat itself was still and I guess you could say, overbearingly quiet. For one, I could hear the low humming of the refrigerator, a sound usually left muffled and drowned out by Dom and Zosia's dynamic and strong-spirited personalities. It was when the flat was without Zosia's alcohol-induced late night rambles, or Dom's anti-dulcet tones rendering a song by Christina Aguilera and you could hear its recurrent drone, that you knew that you were either home alone or that everyone was away with the Sandman or busy actively numbering sheep in their imaginations.

Yet, I was grateful for these early hours alone and grateful for the fact that neither one of them were natural early morning people, one because if Dom had witnessed the dribble on the cushion, and the slob across my cheek then it would have given him the power to go on about it for years, even if I was no longer there in physical form to bear victim to his harmless derision and mockery. And two, because if either one of them found me awake at this time, they would have told me to go back to bed and rest, as if that's all that I'm good for anymore now that I'm ill, and my days left are no longer endless or interminable but numbered, like a timer counting down to zero, only zero was a question mark and who knew how long it would be until I went to the sky. The fact that sick people sleep was after all, a common misconception. Everyone sleeps. Whilst it was fair to say that in recent months, I had been drained of all energy, vitality and life, I was not bound to my bed or my head chained to a pillow. If anything, I had learned from monitoring countless terminally-ill patients before me, that many found it difficult to sleep, not just because of the round-the-clock pain that sickness and disease unleashes onto your body, but because sometimes, when all your body wants to do is shut-off, your mind becomes an endless game of ticking neurotransmitters and bolts, until you can't sleep, and all you can do is lie awake and worry about your future. About numbered days and the father, colleague, friend who will be left behind.

I pulled myself up into an upright position, twisting my body until my back was lying against the back of the sofa, gradually easing my idle body out of its resting state. A cotton throw blanket was still loosely draped over my limp body from where either Zosia or Dom must have gently tucked me in from the night before. I placed a softened palm against the back of my neck, which was still warm from where it had been nestling from underneath the blanket, attempting to massage the dull and still present throbbing sensation away. Then, locking my fingers together into a temporary sculpture of entanglement and bone, I reached my arms out in front of me, attempting to encourage life back into my dozing muscles, and yawning mutely as I did so.

Eventually, once my body felt as fully awake as it could do, and by that I mean about as alive and enthusiastic about living as anything that had endured the past few months being poked, prodded, poisoned and drugged up with meds, I reached for my glasses that someone had caringly pulled away from my face, and left resting on their usual spot on the coffee table. A gleam of light was peeping through a gap in between the curtains, illuminating the coffee table, lustrous and recently polished, that was shining happy and more alive than I was. I rose, positioning my glasses until they were left resting comfortably against my nose, and wandered over to the wooden bookshelf, my bare feet dragging behind me against the carpeted floor.

My fingers drifted, lingering back and forth in front of a series of different books, as my mind contemplated which one would be the most fitting to mark the end of this particular milestone, this one being Arthur Digby's final book, if I were, that is to die either today or tomorrow. If this was going to be the last book that I would ever read in this lifetime, then I wanted it to be something special. I would happily have settled for Napoleon's Memoirs, first edition, but then again, I knew that I had already read it countless times before, and that perhaps my brain was yearning for something more innovative and out of the confines of my recycled Napoleonic library. I opted for a book called The War of Wars by Robert Harvey, it was still about Napoleon in some ways, but it was also one that I hadn't read before. I had picked it because I was intrigued by its efforts of delineating the struggle between Britain and France between 1789 and 1815, as well touching upon the great European conflict between 1793 and 1815. I read this book up until 6AM, when I heard the all familiar thunder and blare of Dom's bedside alarm, followed by the creak of the opening bathroom door.

I was busy downing my meds with a glass of old water, that was probably swimming with bits of grit and dust from where it had lay abandoned on the coffee table overnight, when I felt a sense of inkiness wash over my body, as if my stomach was planning to force its contents back up and into my throat at any moment. I could from hear the distant flush of water, raining from the showerhead and cleansing Dom's naked body and surface of the bath tub that the bathroom was still occupied, and so was forced to settle with the feeling of my unsettled, nauseous stomach.

I turned to catch Zosia, peeping through a gap in her bedroom door as if wary to be left alone with me, in case I intended to die in her arms, and make her miss out on her tracheal stent. I was after all, just a walking painful reminder of a past loss and upcoming grief. Who could blame her for wanting to escape from it all?

I placed a thin warm hand that was wrapped up in the cuff of my dressing gown against my tummy, clutching it as if compressing the liquid contents of my stomach could prevent them from flooding my mouth with last night's dinner, and escaping back through the narrow exit of my throat.

"Zosia" I said, twisting my neck around to face her as I heard her footsteps padding past me and across the carpeted floor.

"Arthur, I... uhm" she paused, approaching the coat rack that was hanging by the front door. Her hair had been elegantly pulled back into a ponytail, and it was almost too perfect, that picturing blood and bile in it made it seem all the more fitting for the role of a CT1: coronary artery bypass grafting and aneurysm repair, with a side of death and getting vomited on.

It was a relief, I thought, for the both of us, when Dom exited from the bathroom in nothing but an ivory bath towel, a combination of sweat and water drooling from his brow, his face as fresh as a daisy, Zosia's as flushed as an athlete, and mine as pale as any ordinary sick person on Keller Ward.

I rose up weakly from the sofa, my body having sunken into its padded hold, and tiptoed promptly towards the bathroom, avoiding the sodden trail of footprints that Dom had left behind.

"Where are you off to?" Dom said, the words partially inaudible in that they had been transferred during a session of intense gagging and intermittent coughing. I was watching them, head raised above the bathroom toilet, exchange their words through the gap in the bathroom door.

"Work."

"What already?"

Zosia didn't say anything, but I could sense from the awkwardness and silence that was spreading around the flat like thick smog in the air uniting with the smell of sick and toilet water, that she had perhaps gestured a muted yes, without the need to actually say the word.

"We could all have breakfast together." Dom said as I re-entered the room, water dripping from his hair onto the kitchen floor and down towards his tailbone.

"No, I can't." I noticed her body tighten, her arms stiffening at awkward angles, as if she were a mannequin with animated prosthetic eyes, looking away from me and Dom and examining the floor for a way out, as if it had answers written in a special kind of ink that only she could see.

"Really?" Dom was fiddling with the tie of his dressing gown, forming it into a loose bow and then pulling it back out of place again without looking, and now the light was bringing out the brightness in his chartreuse-grey eyes. They shined with caution as they caught the light, exposing a subtle suspicion within his glance.

Big day," she replied, pulling a lightweight summer jacket from the coat rack even though it was still cold outside considering it had now reached the end of May, and sweeping away little speckles of dust, illuminating the cream coloured walls with crimson red, as they caught the forbidden beams of light peeping through the blind from across the other side of the room. Her skin was lacking its usual happy glow, and I was thinking about how washed out her cheeks looked in contrast to those walls, a beaming, rosy, happy portrait and Zosia just a blank canvas or slate waiting for that first pencil line.

"Are you okay Zosh?" I asked, as I watched Dom wrestling to put on his dressing gown that had been hung loosely over his left arm, and struggling with the softened friction of the cottoned sleeves against his wet moistured skin.

"Yes, everything's perfectly fine but I just can't stay."

I watched her walk towards the door, as useless as the disease that was killing me. I should have done something to try and get her to stay, but I accepted it, just like I had to accept Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo in Belgium 1815, and that chances were, I wouldn't be there to listen to Dom attempt to rationalise his failure to buy me and Zosh a Christmas present next December.

Zosia was still standing by the front door, one hand pressed up against the wall at an unnatural angle, as if she couldn't bring herself to leave, and as if, the way I liked to picture it, the wall was the sense and conscience that she wouldn't let go of and the only thing keeping her with us. I observed her chest rising and falling like a tide comes in and out at different distances each time, her breathing unreasonably laboured and tumourless lungs working seemingly harder than my mangled ones to fill themselves with oxygen.

As Dom was walking over towards her to say goodbye, I sensed her muscles tensing beneath the woollen border of her layered sleeves, stiff and moving tightly only at the joints, like a doll with a plastered on smile, feigned and aching as she went to wrap her arms around him.

Her eyes were unfocused, zoned out as if she couldn't see anything but the coffins and pain that were creeping up on us from the distance, just waiting to take us all down. At least that's what I thought she was seeing, when I watched her eyes fall into the back of her head as if the whole world had just disappeared right in front of her, hiding that terrified spark of guilt and resistance that had been previously shining in her pupils. Her body collapsed limply into Dom's arms, hands flopping lifelessly over at the wrists unable to hold on to him in her temporary fragile state as he went to catch her. It may have only been for a few seconds, but it felt like we had lost her for good, and I felt like the guiltiest person on earth for never wanting to feel like that again, when in a matter of months I was going to make them feel like that forever.

"Zosh?" Dom was gently pulling her back to her feet, hands supporting her once she was positioned back upright tightly from underneath her armpits. "It's all right, I've got you. Why don't you come and sit down."

"There's no need." The colour was draining back into her face, a clammy powdery blush spreading across her cheeks as thorough as Dom spreads gossip about the girl you brought back home last night. My guess was from embarrassment.

"There's every need. There's no way I'm letting you go anywhere on your own after that. Ollie would kill me. You're staying until I've finished getting ready." Dom was gripping firmly onto her shoulders and walking her over to the sofa next to where I was sitting.

"Dom..."

"How many fingers am I holding up?" Dom said, crouching down so that he was eye level with us seated-pair and waving three fingers around in Zosia's face.

"Dom I fainted. I wasn't smashed around the back of the head with a frying pan."

"Well, I don't want you arriving at work with a mashed up face and half a missing limb after falling head first into a ditch or accidentally walking in front of an approaching bus in your disorientated state. Now, I'm going to make us all breakfast, and then we can go to work together. At least that way I can make sure you make it in in one piece."

"But I'm not even hungry."

"I'm okay too actually." I said.

"Just don't say anything. Either one of you. We are doing this. Whether you like it or not."

"You can't tell a person with cancer what to do," I said. "That's just the lowest of the low."

"Well do you know what else is low? The number of colonies Napoleon left France with within the space of the two decades that he ruled for. At least that's one thing I got out of watching that boring documentary of yours." In that I saw a brief glance of the old Dom. The non-overly-protective-and-uncharacteristically-nice-because-my-best- friend-has-cancer-Dom. I liked him more that way."Honestly, it's like looking after two babies."

"How are you feeling Diggers?" Dom asked, shoving a sandwich and a few of his other belongings into his bag.

Zosia was standing slumped against the kitchen counter in a vacant, and by that I mean, unoccupied-by-mess-following-Dom's-attempt-to-cook-us-all-pancakes corner of the kitchen, waiting for Dom so that they could go and head off to work together.

"Well, I did just spend the past ten minutes throwing up continuously into a toilet, so pretty awful at the moment."

"Yeah, well that's what cancer does to you."

"That's what your cooking does to him," Zosia said, tugging on his arm and nudging him towards the front door."

"I wasn't talking about the cancer, I was talking about the support group," he said now pulling at the zip on his bag in an attempt to close it.

I shrugged. "Fine."

"Really?"

"Yeah... why wouldn't I be?"

"I could always have a word with Hanssen..." he said, forcing his left arm through one of the arm straps, and leaving it there hanging loosely over his shoulder.

"Dom stop... you've got to let me do this on my own okay." I watched Dom's face fall, as Zosia went to place a kiss on the side of my left cheek as I wrapped one of my arms around her shoulder, pulling her in tightly. Her lips were cold, but I could tell from the warmth and squishiness of the embrace that she was a lot more relaxed and calmer than she had been earlier this morning.

"I'll see you later," she said, tugging Dom out of the door before he had a chance to say anything else."

"Bye," I said back, closing the door behind them, the same silence as when I woke up at 4AM this morning refilling the flat, and the low hum of the refrigerator finding it's voice once again.

At 5:43 that afternoon, I drove into a circular driveway behind the church that was only about a nine minute drive away from our flat. I could have walked it had my body not been taken over by the unwanted tumours, or should I say residents that apparently weren't happy enough with the cramped living conditions of my lungs, and took it upon themselves to spread over to my stomach and likely soon enough, across my entire body.

I unbuckled my seat belt, feeling my skin begin to chill as my heart pumped a harsh beat from inside my ribcage, as I wondered what I was really even doing here. I didn't need any help or support. If anything I needed less of it. I already had a best friend who might as well have forced a pillow case over my head and tightened it with a belt whilst I was sleeping, he was that suffocating, and that's all I really needed. I felt my heart begin to pound even more aggressively, as if my forever-wandering mind had unintentionally conducted a brief orchestra of muscle, blood and rattling bones. I felt the hairs on my arms and legs rise and a chill creep down my spine. Some hairs, I observed were curved over at the half way mark, whilst others remained unnaturally straight to the very tip.

"You can do this," I said, in my fatigued trail of thought, staring at the rising fear in my eyes in the front mirror.

I opened the car door, thrashing my left foot forward in an effort to stand but feeling a strangling sensation in my thigh, pelvis, buttocks as if they knew something that my adventurous foot didn't, and were all opposed to the idea of going inside the church, exchanging stories of sorrow and sadness with mere strangers. In the open air, I was sure I could smell the faint metallic odour of blood mixed in with the exhaust fumes of my car. I was still a doctor after all. The cancer didn't change that.

I was glancing unhappily at the miserable tone of blue in the sky and the smokiness in the clouds, when another harsh pounding in my heart lead me to lower back down into the surface of the driver's seat. Just as I was eyeing up the entrance of the church, I felt the white characters of the "Welcome" and listed opening times seemingly flash at me in a harsh unwelcoming red, and the bright blue background behind the letters dim until they echoed the misery of the early afternoon sky.

I was preparing myself to stand back up when I heard the sound of tyres, and found myself glancing at an abrupt flashing of yellow headlights through my right wing mirror. I lowered one foot hastily on to the ground, whilst the other remained pondering over the pedal, watching as a red car, which strangely enough perfectly matched the blushing red tone of anxiety and chill in my cheeks, drove further into the car park. The owner, ruthless and fidgeting with his seatbelt which was digging deep into the side of his throat, was a man, young with dark-brown hair who I figured, from his side profile, was nice-looking with an attractive smile.

I watched as he yanked his keys out of the ignition, and locked eyes with me.

"Glad to see I'm not the only one who's arrived here fifteen minutes early," he said.

"Actually, I..." I was fiddling with the contents of old tissues and crumbs in my right coat pocket, my fingers lost and searching for words.

"I don't think I've seen you around here before." He said, pulling down on the sleeves of his jacket in an attempt to shield his knuckles from the chilly May air.

"Actually, today is supposed to be my first day but I'm not sure I feel up to it anymore."

"Don't be silly, you'll like it. Well, I mean, it can obviously be depressing at times, it's a cancer support group not a club but it's not like your usual type of support group. We don't meet in hospitals, and we don't always sit around in circles exchanging details, like how long we have left to live and whether or not we have mets in our lungs. Sometimes we meet up for drinks, or go out to different places. We're planning a walk down the beach when the weather gets a bit better. Bit of a crappy summer so far this."

I stared at him, wondering to what extent I could trust his words but his eyes were big and brown and friendly.

"Jim, the guy that runs this thing is also pretty cool. You'll like him."

He started wandering over to the entrance, but I remained stood by my car door. Turning around, a small ray of light beamed from the fierce brown in his eyes. He raised an arm which flopped over at the elbow to shield his eyes from the sun, which may as well have not been there at all, given how nippy it was outside. He gestured for me to follow him, and when I didn't he wandered back over to me, wrapping an arm over my shoulder, until I had no choice with my weakened body but to walk with him.

"By the way, I'm Cameron, ex-med student. Hodgkin lymphoma. Might as well get that out of the way whilst we still can."

"Arthur, CT2. Melanoma."

"Excellent."


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's note:** Thank you once again to anybody who took time out of their day to read/review/follow my story :). In particular to the lovely Guest who left a lovely review on the previous chapter and made my day :D! It means a lot! xox

Also, just a quick little disclaimer. Some of the dialogue in this chapter has been either inspired and altered or quoted directly from the show.

 **CHAPTER THREE**

 ****ZOSIA

MAY, 30

I felt the evening sky tremble, a dry quiver in its voice releasing a breeze which caught my hair and blew into my eyes, making them flicker as my brain absorbed brief snapshots of the grimmer world that lay beyond the hospital doors, a peaky and washed out palette of grey that dribbled its torment and despondency through the late spring air. As I left through the hospital entrance, my feet deceivingly light and springy, I could have ran for miles. If the sky hadn't already mapped out the definition of a Nightmare Shift, a grey that started off light in the centre, until it paralleled the tough, thick skin of a gravestone and its even duller surroundings, this day would have been it. We'd lost two patients, one having not even made it into theatre. I had also broken the number one rule when it comes to medicine; never promise a patient that you can save them, even if you believe it to be true. There was also the matter of nearly fainting for the second time that day in the middle of a mitral valve replacement.

Dom was sitting on a wooden bench outside of the hospital, slouched and still with a book resting in his lap as if he'd been waiting there for hours. He looked up at me and smiled as I walked towards him, lifting his book and folding over the corner of his page, closing it before resting it back on to the surface of his lap.

"The letters of Napoleon to Josephine? Sounds utterly thrilling," I said, placing a hand firmly on his left shoulder, before giving it a playful and friendly squeeze.

"I promised Diggers that I would give it a read. Apparently it's one of his favourites. He said that it offers a shred of a glimpse into the kind of man that Napoleon was as a lover, husband and father."

"Dominic Copeland what is happening to you?" He smiled into the pavement, fixating his glance on to the ground as if out of shame. I noticed that his eyes were unsmiling, sombre and grave as he looked back up at me.

"Did you know that Napoleon kept in touch with his lover through intimate letters right from their first meeting in Paris up until their divorce in 1809? Even in despite of everything. The Revolution. The War. It's quite bittersweet really."

"No, I did not know that." We both smiled awkwardly at each other, and in the brief moment that made the atmosphere fill with raw silence and hidden pain, I heard the distant murmur of footsteps approaching Albies, polyurethane and rubber padding softly against the solid pavement. More strong and complete than us united.

"Anyway," he said eventually, pulling himself up. "Enough about me. I see that you managed to survive today then?"

"Yeah," I said. "Just about." He reached a hand over across my back and held it there, supportive and reassuring, and briefly radiating a secluded cold spot with warmth.

"I was thinking about maybe going to Albies if you'd like to join me?"

"Look Zosh," he said, stopping abruptly in the middle of the pavement. I turned to face him. "You know that I'd love to and everything but I... I just don't feel good about leaving Diggers on his own all day. I know he had that support group to go to earlier, and I just wanted to find out how he got on."

"Dom... Look, I know how much you care about Arthur but... this isn't what he would want. I mean, this is Arthur we're talking about and he wouldn't want you to spend every moment that we're blessed enough to still have him in our lives for worrying about him. He'd want you to live yours because it's Arthur. And he's stronger than you give him credit for. I'm sure that..."

"Getting drunk isn't living. It's called escapism."

"Dom..."

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean that." He titled his head backwards, sighing into the clouds that had been engulfed by the misery and bleakness of the evening.

"I know, I just..." I was fiddling with a loose thread on the sleeve of my jacket, and Dom was playing with his fingers, picking at the edge of one of his nails releasing an irritating clicking noise which made my ears feel as if they wanted to bleed. This is what it was like for us to be around each other these days. Of course we still loved each other, but it was as if there was this kind of awkward tension between us. As if we weren't quite used to being left alone together anymore because we no longer knew our limitations and for whatever reason, it felt wrong and that spark we once had was gone. When it came to our friendship, we could manage five, ten minutes as if everything were normal. As if our best friend wasn't at home, sick and dying. And then out of nowhere, cancer would thrust us against a wall, holding a gun which was aligned perfectly against our brains, whispering the truth hauntingly into the silent distance "I'm here to stay. You can't run. You can't hide. You can't even cut me out with a scalpel. _So don't try."_

"Okay, well..."

"Zosia! There you are!" I turned around abruptly, perhaps a little too sharply that it left me feeling dizzy, like my brain was jingling around inside my head. I had to blink to allow my eyes to focus again. It was Ollie, standing by the front entrance of the hospital."Think you can just run off home without me after what happened in theatre?"

"What did happen in theatre?" Dom said, slipping his gaze until his eyes were fully level with mine.

"She zoned out during a crucial part of a procedure."

"What?" I watched as Dom's eyes fell, as if he were disappointed in me, or perhaps more so in himself that his best friend no longer felt like she could confide in him. His eyebrows pulled together, uttering a look of transparent confusion."Why didn't you say anything?"

"What's going on?" said Ollie, taking one of my hands that were sodden with a cold kind of sweat, and stroking the grooves between several of my knuckles. It was probably supposed to be a comforting gesture and encourage me to open up to them but it just made me feel anxious, like I couldn't gather my thoughts properly.

"We... I... uhm..." I was focusing on my breathing, counting every thrash and pound as my heart was trickling the life back into every finger, organ and limb. I wondered then how it was even still able to function the way it should do. To me, my heart felt like a rock that was being slowly eroded away by different meaningful occurrences in my life that started with my mother and would end with Arthur. It was as if a piece of it would crumble away every day, and my blood, a tragic sea of red would carry every broken fragment, dragging it around despite its unwillingness to live amongst those happy memories that still lived in a hidden hollow area of my brain that I liked to call Utopia, flowing around my body lost, but still existing, as constant reminders of the long-term endurance of grief, a special kind of long-term suffering. My hand was trembling, and I was clinging onto it, holding it still against my stomach in hope that nobody would be able to notice it. It was only really because of this that I knew that I was still really present; still living in this moment. Every part of me felt cold, like liquid helium was pumping through my veins and numbing everything that it dared to touch. But to me, the convulsing muscles in my hand were a sign that I was still here, still alive and breathing in this cold and tense space between us.

"Here's an idea," said Dom. "Why don't we just bring the drinks back to ours instead? That way we don't have to feel like we're abandoning Diggers and-"

"Drinks?" interrupted Ollie. He was staring blankly at Dom, with his lips slightly parted.

"Since when have you ever not been up for a drink Valentine?" I said, pressing down gently on his nose. It was pink and cold. There was still a subtle twitching in my fingers, perhaps still visible but passable as simply trembling with the cold air as opposed to fear.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" he said tilting his head slightly over to its side without meaning to break his eye contact with Dom. It was as if he was no longer trying to hide his disapproval.

"You can even come back to ours and keep an eye on her if you don't trust me enough to do so," said Dom.

"I suppose so," he said, shrugging. "Okay, why not?"

xxx

When we got back to the flat, Arthur was lying curled on his side in a near-on foetal position, with his head sunken into one of the sofa cushions. A book was resting against his thighs, and I was wondering how he could even make out the words because the lights were dimmed and because of the awkward angle that he was holding the book pages in.

"Right," Dom said, tearing the book out of Arthur's hands, and thumping it hard against the coffee table. "Sorry to end your intimate night in with Napoleon but we bring you alcohol!"

"Oh wow, so as if it weren't enough that my liver is already susceptible to tumour growth, you now want to cause me liver damage as well."

Dom's face frowned, as he fell silent. "You're right. I'm sorry Diggers, it was ignorant of me." It was a compound of panic and fear. His green eyes closed slowly as if they'd been weighed down by the guilt.

"I was only joking Dom." Dom's face rose back up, releasing an embarrassed smile, his face ruddy, flushed and clammy, as if it couldn't quite keep up with the rush of emotions his heart was feeling.

"Of course, I knew that!" He said, gently shoving Arthur into a mound of fleece, cushion and plush.

"So," he said, pulling him gently back upright before sitting down next to him as Ollie placed a couple of glasses in front of them on the coffee table, "tell me all about the support group."

I was trying my best not to listen. Maybe this made me a bad person, but for once in my life, I didn't want to have to hear about more sick people and their stories. I just wanted to live life in this moment, careless and free and drink alcohol. But then there was also this other part of me that wouldn't stop. This prying side.

"It wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be actually. I met this guy called Cameron. He was nice. There's also this guy called Leo. Oh and the guy that runs it, Jim. He's really friendly. Actually, we're supposed to be meeting up next week for a few drinks so, there's something at least to look forward to."

Dom didn't say anything. He just smiled. Happy and content for his friend, in a way that I thought I could never be.

xxx

After my second drink, Ollie pulled me away to the kitchen whilst Arthur and Dom remained on the sofa. Arthur was fast asleep. In the dim light of the living room, I could just make out the back of his head which was nuzzled into Dom's lap. Dom had draped a cotton blanket over Arthur's dozing body, which also reached his entire length, covering his own toes. He was supporting the side of Arthur's face with one hand, and holding a glass of vodka and coke with the other.

"Move in with me, again..." Ollie said, blinking slowly as he said so, and then holding an intense blue gaze, like he was abrading my skin with them every time they flickered from corner to corner across the slim width of my face. It was as if he was analysing every part of my existence. Every crinkle from every smile. Every absorption from every falling tear. All I wanted in that moment was to escape to a hot shower, and sterilise his glance off of my skin.

"What?"I said, staring straight ahead into his chest which was bordered with a light blue shirt that matched his eyes. I was panning my eyes up slowly to meet his. "Really?"

He cleared his throat."I'm serious," he said running a finger down the side of my cheek until it reached my chin. My face was damp and sticky but he held it there.

"Right, and is that you or the vodka talking?"

"Don't be ridiculous, I've only had one so far," he said, running his finger across my lips. "We'll just have to make it more uhm... Just more."

"Really?" I said pulling away from him. I wanted to squeal and grab his face between my hands but I managed to retain composure.

"Really." He smiled at me, and then I reached for his face, pulling it in towards mine without really even thinking. With one hand I stroked his hair with my fingertips, which was soft and wet in places, somehow keeping its shape and withstanding the passion and intimacy. I was running my hands all over him, whilst he just kissed me silently with his eyes closed, unconsciously pushing me up against the kitchen fridge.

"What I would do to be Diggers right now," said Dom sleepily, who still had Arthur's body lazing limply on top of him as we carried on kissing in the kitchen.

xxx

I got up early that morning. My first night back at Ollie's flat since before our break up was as followed. I was left locked outside of the flat in the cold whilst he lay there passed out on the sofa, having handed over the responsibility of paying the taxi driver. I was then woken up in the middle of the night whilst he attempted to make a 4am carbonara, which actually almost made me want to be sick myself.

Ollie had been vomiting continuously into the bathroom sink up until 7am. When you're surrounded by sick people every day, you can become very accustomed to the noise of intense retching and people choking up on their own bile. Of course this wasn't exactly any different from home. With Arthur being so poorly due to his meds, we often found ourselves having to fight for our turn in the bathroom.

Ollie arrived at work just over an hour later than I did.

"You were up early this morning."

I was stirring around sugar into a mug of tea. A painkiller was propped at the back of my mouth resting on my wet tongue. "Yeah, you're right. I could probably have done with a lie-in after being locked outside for half of the night."

"Oh come on Zosh, go easy on me. I feel like I've been hit by a bus here."

"And you were the one worried about me drinking last night. You know I never would have found myself locked outside if you hadn't been so insistent on me moving back in with you last night," I said, taking a sip of the tea, and swallowing the pill which had already started dissolving. It burnt my throat as it went down.

"Okay, I admit I may have been a little bit tipsy and it may have been a bit hasty but at least I've apologised."

"No you haven't actually!" I said, handing him the mug before leaving him alone in the staff kitchen to resonate in hangover-self-pity.

xxx

"This is Samuel Coates, age 24. He started noticing signs of shortness of breath on the bus on his way back home from uni. He was then found collapsed in-"

"Sam. It's just Sam." He smiled awkwardly. "I don't ever go by Samuel anymore."

Ollie smiled back at him in acknowledgement before continuing."He's tachycardic, had heart palpitations and he's also hypertensive."

"I was on my way to meet my girlfriend when it happened and then I just ended up collapsing in the middle of the street." He looked away from us both temporarily. He had dark brown hair, which curled slightly at the front and was stuck to his face with sweat. "I was so embarrassed."

"What's her name?" asked Ollie.

"Violet. I never got the chance to let her know. She's probably still waiting for me now."

"Right well, we can always contact her for you."

"You know if it's any consolation, I know somebody that once left their girlfriend locked outside of their house for half of the night after he'd spent the entire night drink-"

"Zosia!" he interrupted before I had a chance to finish exposing him. "We'll run a few tests just to be on the safe side. Can we have an echo, an ECG and a chest x-ray please?" A nurse nodded back at him.

"Am I going to be okay? I mean, it's just that... it... it doesn't exactly sound that good."He was scared. I could sense it through the way he kept on pulling the side of his hospital gown and twisting at the material whenever he went to talk.

"It's just a precautionary measure. There can be any number of reasons for your symptoms, anxiety, str-." I stopped after feeling a sudden wave of nausea hail down me. It was as if everything I had eaten yesterday was about to come splashing up out of my guts and I had to hold my breath for a couple of seconds before I was able to talk again.

"Are you okay?" Ollie asked, placing a hand firmly on my back.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Right well, we'll be back with your test results. Please excuse us." He pulled me outside, turning me around to face him. "All of the grief you've been giving me this morning and it turns out that you're actually hungover as well.

"I'm not. I only had three drinks last night." For a moment I felt as if I were being strangled, as if somebody was tightening their hands around my throat and somebody else was crushing my brain, so that I could no longer make sense of anything.

"Then how do you explain almost vomiting up all over yourself in front of a patient."

"I didn't. It was probably that bloody carbonara you made me eat at 4am this morning." I went to shove him but then I could feel this sudden blazing rush ignite in the side of my abdomen. My stomach felt like it was about to explode its contents across the entire length of Darwin but I clenched my throat, despite the urge and discomfort. There was nothing I needed less right now than to have to explain myself to Miss Naylor why there were these endless chunks of 4am carbonara trailed across her ward. But it was all making sense to me now. And let me tell you, nothing emulates the sensation of drowning more than having sick and your heart in your mouth at the same time.

xxx

I was sat in the staff toilets with a stick in my hand. Two little blue lines. I wish they would have just faded away along with everything else but they wouldn't. Just like a tumour sticks to your brain and becomes part of you once it reaches that final crucial, incurable stage, this life, whatever it was, would soon shape itself to become a part of mine. I was shaking and even though it was silent, except maybe from the sobbing and irrational puffs of the rising and falling in my chest, my ears felt like they were about to explode. I could hear the rattling of my legs against the toilet seat and a distant trickling of water from out of one of the taps. It was such a lonely sound but it made me feel as if I wasn't alone.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note:** A big thank you to Josie and Madeline for being so sweet, and leaving two lovely reviews on the previous chapter :)! Thank you both so, so much! Your kind words mean a lot to me! Thank you to everybody else who has been amazing enough to take time out of their day to read/review/favourite my story! I hope you enjoy this next chapter (just a little warning, it is unintentionally long in comparison to previous chapters)! xox

 **Disclaimer:** As in the previous chapter, some of the dialogue in this chapter may have been borrowed or reworded in some form from the show. Also, the character of Phoenix Hill is based off of a character from one of my favourite past episode's "Handle With Care", (Series 18, Episode 26)!

 **CHAPTER FOUR**

DOMINIC

JUNE, 1

Walking towards the hospital entrance that morning, the same way I had done since my initial induction on Keller felt like the most complicated procedure on earth. I felt like a toddler, who despite having already mastered the art of performing a laparoscopic cholecystectomy was rediscovering things for the first time. There was, I noticed, this distinct muddy blemish on the concrete walkway which was sandwiched between two bushes. One of the bushes was overgrown, simulating some kind of tall and puffy hairstyle from the eighties. The other grew lopsided, and its asymmetry probably annoyed me more than the painful reminder of the unnaturally straight bowl haircut my mother had once given me as a child, which now remained in photographic form on my parent's kitchen fridge. The paintwork of the little wooden bench with lay west-facing the walkway was beginning to chip away, and I guessed that this wasn't anything to do with being weather-beaten but rather man, picking away at it piece by piece with every brutal rejection, world-shattering prognosis and loss.

Of course all of this had meant nothing to me, but now I was taking everything in, breathing in the warm morning air which was now without a single trace of cold or chill to refresh my overwhelmed lungs. It was as if I could no longer connect this trivial, non-defining part of my world to a part of my life. In recent days, ambling through the hospital entrance wasn't as simple as lifting and setting down each foot in turn, because every stride would leave me feeling afflicted with some kind of torment and guilt that would reside inside my stomach and remain there until the end of each and every shift. I couldn't be with or without Arthur, because when he wasn't there, I'd just be missing him, thinking about the worst and praying that he'd still be there breathing and smiling in adoration of Napoleon when I got home, and even when he was there working beside me, I'd just be worrying about his each and every move, wanting to take him away to the on-call room every couple of hours to rest. I never once worried about his capability as a doctor but I did worry about the strain the busy rush may have been having on his terminal frame, that was always so busy fighting and remaining strong it was always a wonder to me when it even ever had a chance to rest.

Today was Arthur's first day back on Keller since he had been advised by Hanssen to take some time off. To gather his thoughts. To come to terms with the Actualities of Dying.

As we strolled through the hospital parking lot, my nostrils flared, picking up the distant scent of tobacco, emitting its harmful essence across the entrance of the hospital grounds. A gowned patient, young, bearded and slender with floppy light brown hair and beaming brown eyes was standing by the entrance, busy rotting away his lungs. I felt this sudden impulse to snatch the cigarette out from his hand and stamp on it, just like I would with all kinds of cancer and terminal illness if they weren't so mortal and so busy existing in people's intestines, kidneys and brains.

I was busy eyeballing him, with so much distaste and repulsion, that I may as well have had 'lungs: the property of a non-smoker, do NOT contaminate' stitched across my forehead. But, for whatever silly reason, I felt this inner compulsion to protect Arthur from the tobacco smoke. I wanted to guard him, selflessly wrap myself around him, safely burying his face into my fabricated chest, or sweep his body up into my arms and smuggle him through the hospital entrance with his body dangling from beneath my arms before he had a chance to struggle or say anything. I didn't know if this would have been more of a selfish or selfless act, but the thought of the tar filling his lungs and darkening the tumours with black, thick grime made me want to throw up all of my breakfast. All of my selfish thoughts and distaste for the world.

"Sorry," I heard a voice say breathless from behind me. It was low, and soft and Scottish. As we became only a matter of footsteps away from the entrance, I had been looking in the opposite direction, trying to avoid my own involuntary inhalation of the smoke. I turned back around to face the man. His bright brown eyes were still beaming and he was looking up at me, holding an apologetic gesture in his glance. The cigarette was now pulled away from his mouth and as he held it facing down towards the concrete, little clouds of smoke begun rising and circulating around us, crawling past Arthur's nostrils and escaping through a gap underneath my armpit, bitter, grey and toxic. "I know you..." he said, scanning Arthur's face intensely with his sparkling eyes and scratching at his jaw, "you're the new guy... at the support group. The doctor."

"You know him?" I said, turning to face Arthur.

He nodded, before tilting his chin slightly and frowning into the unclouded sky. "You smoke?" he said, turning down the softened edges of his mouth almost in perfect synchronisation with the drooping in his shoulder blades and general posture.

He buried his face away from Arthur for a few seconds and it was then that I observed how from a distance, you could probably mistake his eyes for the sunlight. They were so intense, shining full of energy and life.

"You know I only started after the diagnosis. That's the ironic thing." He paused briefly to catch his breath, which seemed to me as it were competing in an endless triathlon it was so choppy, submerging itself in the water every now and then in an endless loop. "Before that I was doing everything right and I still managed to get sick." His speech was slow, and I had noticed how he had started pausing often between words, as if he was in some form of discomfort and was camouflaging his pain with smiles and charm.

"What changed?" I said, attempting to ease the still lit cigarette gently out from his hand and he let me.

"I stopped caring so much about living. Well, not about living entirely, it's not like I want to die but I mean, living the way other people wanted me to. Before this, it felt like my entire life was being written by other people."

Arthur's eyes had been shimmering in the sunlight, reflecting fading smoke, sympathy and a kind of mutual silent pain. It was the first day in weeks where I hadn't needed to carry some form of coat or jacket to work with me. Maybe Arthur had brought the sunshine with him. His thin and pale face was laced with concern, and as he placed a hand firmly onto the patient's arm, I crushed the cigarette with a steady foot. The tiny little flame went out.

The patient continued. "I went to uni because it's what my family wanted me to do. I studied law because," he stopped for a moment, breathing in deeply and rubbing discreetly at one of his sides, "because they wanted me to, even though all I really wanted to do was to get into theatre studies. Directing, playwriting, that kind of thing."  
Arthur was smiling at him, and I couldn't tell if this was out of mutual pity or admiration.  
"So you're telling me that you're smoking because you can, not because you want to. That's tantamount to idiocy really," I said honestly but as blunt as it was, it was true.

"Dom!" Arthur said, staring at me harshly with disapproving eyes as if challenging my professionalism, before rubbing at them with the back of his hands.

"I'm just saying that if you're willing to kill yourself to prove a point, why not try jumping out of a plane or climbing Mount Everest naked or something. There's nothing honourable about dying young of smoking-induced heart disease."

If you've ever heard of the expression "here one minute, gone the next", then I couldn't think of a better way to explain it, than through the use of the patient's eyes. One second they were beaming, bright and brown and alive, like two new little shiny pennies at the bottom of a purse, reflecting beams of light amongst the weary sky, putting the sun which was now freshly out from hibernation to shame.

One second I was asking myself, "How am I supposed to compete with that?", when they made my eyes look like the colour of dead grass. Next second, the glint was gone, and they were dulling away rapidly, the light dying almost entirely like there was some kind of on and off switch or control lowering the brightness down to zero.

The patient turned grimacing, bony fingers fumbling and scraping against brick as they reached out weakly for the wall. We both lurched, inching in closer to assist him. I was staggering with a brief, rising panic, but Arthur was composed and professional, already stood by the patient's side.

"I'm really sorry but I've forgotten your name." he said, slowly wrapping his pale fingers around the patient's shoulders and pressing down on them gently, encouraging him to lower slowly into the ground. My eyes were beginning to feel warm and damp. This was the Arthur I knew, and wanted to remember. This brave intelligent doctor who cared deeply and wanted nothing more but to save lives.

The patient was wrestling for the air to refill his lungs. Arthur was holding onto him, staring intently into the now dampened shade of brown in his eyes with a natural manner of calm and reassurance. When he finally responded, his voice was coarse and raw, dry from lapping up so much air.  
"My name is... Will," he groaned. "William... Caddell."

I bent down. "What were you admitted for?"I said, lowering my glance until I was eye level with him and placing one hand gently against his back, brushing my fingers reassuringly against him in light broad sweeps.

"I have acute lymphocytic leukaemia. I was having difficulties with my breathing," he said weakly. He tried to push himself up, groaning harshly and clutching at his side, and I watched as Arthur stiffened, a shiver running through him. I felt it passing onto me.

"Arthur go and get a trolley," I said taking over in a softened tone as my lips were level against Will's ear. I sounded calm even though my chest was burning with panic and adrenaline."It's all right," I said, holding onto him, "try and stay calm for me, okay?" I was swaying my body lightly with every word, as if I was rocking him but I wasn't. Maybe I was rocking myself.

Then I felt Will's sodden palm brush against my hand. At first I thought he was reaching for it, asking for an inaudible grasp of reassurance but then I felt this level stroke of paper against one of my knuckles. I let the packet of Sterling cigarettes fall into my hand, and tucked them away out of reach and sight into my back jean pocket.

xxx

Sacha had been holding out two blue patient folders. My eyes had been wandering, ticking from left to right, and just as I was about to reach out and grab the folder that had been wrapped securely beneath his right palm, I felt this sudden numbness swell inside my gut. I snatched my lingering hand back holding it there for a moment, eyeing up the folder that remained in his opposite hand.

"I'll take that one," I said, clutching the left folder with uncertainty.

"Right," said Sacha, as an approving smile beamed across his face beneath his bright and rounded cheeks, "congratulations, you have swelling and pain in the abdomen, vomiting, breathlessness and back pain."

It felt like something was weighing me down. Like there was this devastating conscience that would always be hanging over me, dangling from a tired rope. It was this overwhelming dash of guilt that would spring up every time I felt like I was taking an opportunity away from Diggers.

"What's in the other one?" I asked.

"A sebaceous cyst." I paused for a moment, thinking, briefly consulting my inner morals. Of course my folder contained the more interesting case, but deep down I knew what had to be done.

"I'll take the cyst." My heartbeat slowed, comfortingly. It was a reassurance that I was doing the right thing by my friend.

"Right, so you're willing for me to give this one to Arthur?" Sacha's eyes were hazed, tinted with a subtle rush of surprise and bewilderment.

"Yes." I nodded.

"Dom..." He didn't need to finish what he was saying because there was this undeniably fluorescent sense of doubt in his voice. He just didn't understand. It was like I was a broken down truck, being pulled along through every inch of life by a tow-rope. Only I wasn't too sure that this was what I wanted. Here is the thing that many people failed to understand. Spending every second of your life worrying about somebody is tiring but not being able to be yourself because you're so busy worrying about that person is exhausting.

"What? Why are you staring at me?"

"I tell you what, I will do the cyst and you and Arthur can work on Mr. Hill. I want you to spend some quality time together, okay?" He meant well but there was a sinking feeling in my stomach, this annoyance just existing and expanding itself across my gut like the sea spreads itself across a beach, and little rocks and empty clamshells become lost.

"Sacha!" I protested, yelping helplessly across the surface of the empty desk but Sacha already had his back turned to me and was walking away before I had a chance to argue with him. This battle had been futile and I should have been ashamed. But like Arthur would say, "You lose some fights. You win some." Napoleon didn't win over sixty battles by succumbing to defeat.

xxx

Within my second hour of arriving at the hospital, I had decided that there were two things I had never been more certain about in my life. One, I was never going to smoke, even if, somehow, for whatever insane reason my life depended on it.Two, I had not fought my way through med school, blood, sweat and one night stands, even having repeated a foundation year with the intention of having to help a Roundhead to undress before I was able to fully examine him.

Phoenix Hill, a patient in his late twenties was dressed from head to toe, in what I personally would have labelled a mishmash of medieval tat, but had been officially corrected to refer to it as "a full period Roundhead costume."  
I had had to fight the urge to call for a psych assessment as I helped him to remove a replica metal breastplate but then I had reminded myself that this was Holby, and once you've seen patients choking and vomiting up pieces of lego, and transfers to AAU from the ED with their jaws half hanging off; real-life Frankenstein monsters in the making, you've seen it all.

"Right, I'm just going to have a quick feel of your abdomen. If I could please get you to rate the pain on a scale of zero to ten for me." I said, getting him to pull up his under shirt and pressing gently over the affected area. His body was hot and sticky.

A helmet that was rounded at the top was obscuring part of his face but there was this dark brown sweep of curls which made up part of his fringe peeping out from beneath the helmet. He was grimacing slightly.

"I don't know, about a four? I've had this starred in my calendar for months. I don't know why they didn't just let me go on, flaming Cavaliers were always making trouble."

"Really? It's just that from the consistent wincing I'm guessing that it's more of an eight."

Phoenix slipped the helmet from his head, releasing a soft clicking sound as he unlocked the buckle that was holding the helmet firmly against his chin. He grimaced, ruffling a hand through his front curls as I continued pressing against his abdomen, this time a little more firmly and thorough.

"Okay, so there's definitely some noticeable swelling here. And how long have you been experiencing this back pain for?" I said, turning back to face him whilst kneading in a blob of anti-bacterial hand gel across my knuckles and into my palms.

"Not sure, a couple of weeks maybe? It's only really when I lie down that I notice it."

"So how did this end up happening?"

"Well, if you look online you'll find that there are a range of different re-enactment groups out there. The Sealed Knot, the English Civil War Society, that's if you're wanting to specialise in English Civil War. Then you've also got the smaller groups such as the Stuart Regalia. You just have to sort them out really. Put your name down."

"I wasn't talking about the re-enactments-"

"Oh, sorry. I get carried away sometimes." He smiled nervously, looking across to Arthur. "Uhm, I first noticed this pain in my abdomen but I thought it was just some cramping so I just ignored it but then it got progressively worse and I had to sit down on the field for a bit. And then we were called on to prepare for battle but I couldn't get back up."

I simply nodded at him then turned to face Essie. "Right, okay, so nurse Harrison could I please get FBC, LFTs, U&Es and a full abdomen and chest CT scan please."

"So that's your period is it? English Civil War?" Arthur's cheeks were turning a faint and faded shade of cardinal, probably due to the rare rush of excitement that came with finding another idiot that shared his lame passion and enthusiasm for dead military leaders.

"No, Mongolian history is really my big thing but there's just not the re-enactments. I did do a rehearsal for one couple of months ago though."

I rolled my eyes, picking at my nails and releasing this irritating clicking sound.

"That's amazing!" There was a sparkle in his eyes, this blazing flame of happiness that was burning, intense and ferocious amongst the usual dullness, like the sun reflecting amongst the pit of the deepest, darkest ocean.

"Would you mind if I?" he gestured towards the helmet that was resting on the bed alongside one of Phoenix's hip bones.

"No, go ahead." Phoenix was smiling, happy and alert in despite of his pain and I realised that I was too. There was something about him that was infectious. Maybe it was because he reminded me so much of Diggers. Maybe it was because the helmet had such a clumsy fit on Diggers, even though he and Phoenix had similar head shapes, each one practically a clone of the other. The helmet kept on slipping down his face, hiding his smiling eyes underneath the solid and cold replica metal.

"Why haven't I ever done anything like that?" he said, as Phoenix leant over wincing slightly, to help Arthur with tightening the chin strap.  
"Well there's still plenty of time, you're not dead yet." Once it had been secured in place, Phoenix pulled the helmet back up, so that Arthur was able to see again.  
I watched as his eyes widened further, as my heart sank into this pit of emptiness.

xxx  
"How are you doing?" I said smiling down at Phoenix, glad to see that he was now dressed fully out of his re-enactment clothes and waiting, sitting patiently in a white hospital gown.

Arthur was standing on the opposite side."How's the pain? Any worse than before?"

"No." Phoenix shook his head. "Do you have any idea what it could be?"

"It's a little bit too early to say I'm afraid."

Phoenix frowned, pulling at the side of his gown but there was this shiftiness in the motion of his eyes as he turned away from me wincing that made me feel uncomfortable. What if he was in more pain than he was letting on, as I had previously suspected?

"And," I said continuing "we still don't have all of your medical records yet."

He settled himself, looking back up at me with a glance that was full of composure and innocence, a completely different set of eyes than the ones I had seen fifteen seconds ago. What was it with patients and being so good at hiding the truth?

"That would be the deed poll change."

"You changed your name?" I sounded amazed. I didn't know why that was. I should have figured that nobody with at least half a brain cell would be stupid enough to name their son after a fictional bird.

"What was it before?"

Phoenix was looking away from us, staring into the milky, colourless wall on the opposite side of the room. He was squirming beneath the hospital sheets. A hidden shame. "What could possibly be worse than Phoenix?" I wanted to ask.

"Dominic," he said eventually, in a hushed tone, pressing his chin into the base of his neck.

Arthur was already looking up at me amused, his lips sucked inwards and curled beneath his teeth, raising a loosely clenched fist up towards his mouth, probably to prevent himself from erupting into a fit of laughter. I narrowed my eyes at him.

Phoenix shifted against the pillows, his hazel eyes were inching around the room awkward and apologetic, even before knowing what there was to be sorry for.  
Before anybody could explain, I heard a voice call from behind me. My shoulders shifted foward and for a moment I found myself just standing there, listening intently to my accelerated heart beat.

"Dom!"

I turned to find two heavy blue eyes staring at me, desperate and fearful as if they carried a lot more than just a mimicking shade of a deep blue sea."Ollie, what are you doing here?"

"Have you seen Zosia?" he said panting slightly, as if he'd been running.  
Something inside me sank. It was another punch to the stomach, another ocean to drown me in, another unwanted brawl with reality. I could have sunk into the floor there and then, but I just stood there useless, a chill running down my spine as I tensed my jelly legs.

"No..." I said, shuddering. I barely knew him, despite him also having dated Zosia in the past as well as the present, but the alarm in his eyes was so intense, it could not have been mistaken for overly-protective-and-paranoid-boyfriend. Something was up, but I couldn't do this in front of Diggers. Certainly not in front a patient. I reached out eagerly, not so much thinking about what I was doing, grappling onto the side of Ollie's navy scrubs and tugged at him, gesturing for him to follow me to a quieter part of the room. Then I continued.

"I haven't heard from her since last night. She must have gone to bed as soon as she got in from work. She was so quiet, I didn't even know that she was there. I thought she was at yours but then I heard her getting up once I had settled down to say goodnight to Diggers."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, she kind of got herself into this habit of saying goodnight to Arthur every night before she goes to sleep, just in case-"I let my voice trail off, swallowing hard. It didn't take a genius to fill in the blank.

"And what about this morning?" he asked running a hand through his hair, that was sticking against forehead in places with sweat. But it was said with such urgency and weight that it felt more like I was being interrogated.

"She was already up and dressed before my first alarm had even gone off." Ollie closed his eyes for a moment and held them there. "Is everything alright?"I said, as he titled his head back, sighing uneasily into the ceiling.

The two shining little blue oceans, beady and panic stricken re-emerged as he reopened his eyes. "Not really, no. She was supposed to be assisting Jac in theatre but she didn't turn up. Matteo had to take over and now she's not answering her phone." Ollie went to cast his phone into the wall but I stopped him, swiftly turning him to face me. Maybe it was because he was all pent up with frustration, but his face looked red and moist.

"Leave it with me," I said, reaching up behind his shoulder and patting it a couple of times. I was no good at this anymore, comforting people who I wasn't particularly close to."I'll let you know if I hear anything."

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone, my palms smearing the screen with sweat but I didn't let this bother me. There just wasn't the time. My fingers fumbled sloppily across the keys, stiff and shaking, as I tried to make sense and write out a message. I hit the send button as soon as I did.

"Zosh, where are you? I'm worried x"

I didn't expect a reply but I got one. My heart rose, beating steadily inside my mouth for a few seconds before plummeting when I read the response.

"I'm on the roof. Please don't tell anyone."

xxx

By the time I reached the bottom of the stairs my body was already aching. I had barely acknowledged the distinct sound of rubber squeaking against metal as my trainers thundered against the steps. The clouds were gone, the light was gone and so was the hope. I had almost tumbled on the stairs, my feet sliding against the little droplets of rain that marked their territory amongst each and every inch outside of the hospital, saturating my hair, my berry scrubs and the hospital grounds. My chest was burning, a deadly blend of cold, fear, adrenaline, panic, exhaustion, pain, apprehension, amongst other things.

And then I saw her, standing towards the edge, head titled back and losing herself in the misery of the dreadful weather. Her arms were dripping and crossed and she was rubbing her hands along them to keep herself warm. Her ponytail was drenched and sticking to the back of her neck and the thin sodden material of her navy scrubs was exposing the outline of her spine. I wondered then if she knew just how close to the edge of the roof she was. Was she just simply unaware, or so intent on causing myself and Ollie to suffer a heart attack that she was willing to risk everything? All it would have taken was a brief gust of wind to topple her over the edge.

"Zosia!" I said loudly but softly, not wanting to scare her and cause her to tumble over the edge and plunge to her death.

She turned, shrunken and vulnerable, her face red and sticky with a mixture of rain, sweat and tears. "Dom!"

I ran towards her then, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her away from the edge. She was shivering uncontrollably and so was I, two rattling frames both hysterical, over-emotional and swampy, sobbing on top of a hospital roof underneath a murky afternoon sky. I would have laughed at it all if I wasn't struggling so hard to catch my breath.

Once we had both calmed down, we sat down against each other, still perched up on the hospital roof. I stroked the side of her face observing as a small droplet of water dripped from her nose, playing a silent game of guessing whether it was _rain or tears_? as it rolled down off of her cheek, and absorbed into her damp knee that was pulled tightly into her chest.

"So, are you going to tell me what all of this is about?"I said gently.

"I can't." She looked away from me. Why was the tension never ending between us? Why couldn't we trust each other enough to just be open like we used to?

"Look Zosh, I can't help you if you won't talk to me but I really want to be able to. Tell me."She was still shaking, so I slipped off my grey hoodie, draping it over her shoulders and pulled her in. I wasn't warm but if we cuddled up tightly together, maybe there was more of a chance of us generating some kind of heat.

"I'm..." she stopped.

"Is this about Arthur?" I was sure that this was it, I would have bet millions. What else would it have been? Why else would she have avoided theatre? Abandoned her patient? Hidden away from Ollie?

"No, not exactly... I..."she trailed off again, sighing, swallowing sunken breathes of hopelessless.

"Look, I know it's been really difficult these past few months but-"

"Dom you're not listening to me," she said pulling away and I felt a burst of cold brush against my side as she did so, the dampness of my scrubs enhancing the blistering chill.

"I'm sorry." I reached for one of her hands, stiff, cold, tense but amongst other things still, collected, human. She wasn't shaking anymore.

"I'm-"

"You're?"

"Pregnant."

I tensed, and for a moment I was glad that she had pulled away from me. My lips parted slightly, releasing tiny clouds of air instead of words. I watched as they faded into the soggy atmosphere in front of me.

"And this is good news?" I said eventually.

"No...I don't know. I only found out yesterday."

Neither one of us said anything for a while. I was busy contemplating what to say, listening to the sound of the rain pattering against the roof, to the distant gusts of wind blowing over Holby. The world was finally quiet and somehow, I quite liked it that way.

"So this is what all of this weird behaviour has been about then? The fainting, the early nights?" She nodded. "Does Ollie know?"

"No. Nobody does."

"Zosh, you've got to tell Ollie."

"I know..."she nodded, pulling at the hoodie for warmth or comfort, I didn't know which. It was as if she didn't want to think about it, the same way I didn't want to think about losing sense of myself when it came to losing Arthur.

"Dom..."I didn't say anything, I was too tired, too exhausted. I just looked up at her in acknowledgement. "I'm sorry, if I worried you," she choked, the words catching somewhere in her throat.

"Don't be ridiculous it's not your fault."

"It's just..." she said quietly, the trembling in her voice hurting me in a way I couldn't explain. I was so done with seeing my friends like this. So broken. So vulnerable. It just wasn't fair. It pained me more than I imagined a bullet to the chest would. She continued, as I pulled her back in towards me. She let her head fall against my shoulder, drenching it further as she let go of everything. All of her aching, all of her pride, first slowly, releasing little sniffles and then heavy sobs as it came out all at once. "I don't know if I can. Arthur. The baby. Any of it..."

"Zosh, shhh," I hushed, still clinging onto her, this time tighter than ever. I was rocking gently, just as I had done whilst holding Will earlier. My eyes were wet too but I didn't know it, not until I heard the uncontrollable wails as I plunged my face into Zosia's shoulder.

We remained there until our breathing was in sync with each other, calm beats and exhales that we were now in control of. Until I got Zosia to believe the words, "It's okay. It will all be okay in the end." Until the rain stopped pouring. Until the repressed sun forced its way eagerly back through the army of grey clouds in the sky, shining brightly down on us like it could never truly become defeated.  
xxx


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's note:** This was initially going to be one super, super long chapter but I decided to split it into two parts. I hope you enjoy :).

 **CHAPTER FIVE**

ARTHUR

JUNE, 1

For the second time that day, I felt this unnerving sensation throb within my stomach as little knots began to form and refuse to loosen, little mini nooses wrapping themselves around every strong and brave thing that was still existing inside of me. I counted each throb as if I had my own second little heartbeat that was busy lashing apprehension through my veins like a raging fear tearing its way through every human ribcage, extinguishing all sense of self-control and equanimity.

But there, I thought, could have been no sweeter betrayal than this: My Body. First allowing itself to be eaten alive by tumours, then working itself into an alarmed state every time I sensed that something was wrong. No matter how small, senseless or foolish.

I could say all I wanted to about Dom and his endless need to wrap me up in thick cotton blankets, lavishing me every now and then in heartfelt remarks that I could take to the grave with as little pain and concern in his voice as he could muster. How I would always be his closest friend. How he had always envied my strength and determination. Words that would always have remained unspoken, until it reached that time where I would die peacefully in my sleep in my late 80s and he would be sat alone somewhere, still listening to Kylie, writing up my eulogy in the dark. _If only I had been given that life.  
_  
It was in Dominic Copeland's nature to care, whilst acting as if he didn't. He was one of the best actors I knew. And yet I was hardly any different. It was as if, every time either one of them returned home late, every time one of them failed to answer one of my calls, this curtain of self-composure would draw itself back, unleashing painful flicks of paranoia. What if they had finally had enough of this? Of me? I wouldn't blame them. But just as much as they needed reassurance that I wouldn't be slipping away just yet, I needed to know that they would be okay without me. Hurting them hurt more than anything else when it came to being sick and this endless game of charades that we kept on playing with each other with our emotions was wearing thin.

Dom had been pulled away from me and his patient earlier by Ollie and almost half an hour later he was still nowhere to be seen. After twenty minutes, I began dialling his mobile, now at a clean, obsessive total of four attempts but he still wasn't answering. I was staring at one of the white-washed walls that had been plastered with NHS posters on the far end of the corridor, pondering every possible situation and outcome. My hands kept on diving into my pocket, an anxious tick that I had little control over, fingers twitching every few minutes as they smeared sweaty fingerprints across the screen in feeble search of a miss call, voice message, text; anything.

My impulse was to try calling him again or to try Ollie but then I could hear a loud voice calling across to me. My fingers were fumbling, my phone launching itself from my grip and I groaned slightly as my fingers were outstretching further than they could reach. There was a sudden clunk as it rattled against the ground, perhaps the shattering of one hundred pieces of its tiny screen but I didn't have time to check.

"Arthur! Where's Dom?" I turned, shuddering as rubber squealed against the PVC flooring, emitting a terrible sound as one of my trainered feet went sliding across the floor. It was Sacha.

"No idea." I shrugged, taking a deep breath. I contemplated then what else I was going to say to him. Should I pull a Dom and pretend that I don't know and that I don't care, even though I do. I really, really do. It was partially still the truth after all and I wasn't even sure if he was still on hospital grounds. But still, there was a part of me that was angry. Couldn't he sense what this was doing to me? It was taking everything not to down a packet of Kalms. If I really wanted to get back at him and if it wasn't for the unconsolable guilt that I would feel if he really had managed to pull off a disappearing act then I would probably have settled for "He's at Albies. He thought he'd fancy his chance with one of the barmen. Apparently sex means more to him than his patients."

But I was oblivious, tired and delirious yet, even though this part of me suspected that something bad may have happened to him, a selfish part of me wouldn't allow myself to say anything. Sacha didn't need to see this pathetically paranoid shell of a man that Cancer had turned me into. There were some things that some people didn't need to know.

"He disappeared somewhere with Ollie about half an hour ago," I eventually added, biting through the thin top layer of skin on my bottom lip. I bent down, retrieving my phone from the speckled blue flooring. It was the dullest possible shade of blue. I had always found it so ugly, even more so now that I was staring so intently at it but focusing on it meant not having to focus on Sacha and his bewildered face. At exposing the terror rising in my eyes. I swallowed, readjusting the position of my glasses with latent awareness as if the thin layer of glass was enough to shield the truth.  
I ran my thumb down one of the chipped edges, then across the screen that was somehow still intact. A miracle perhaps? I hadn't been aware up until this point that those even still existed.

"Oh, well I hope everything's alright," replied Sacha, patting me firmly with one of his solid palms. I thought for a moment, how they probably held more strength with one simple movement than every single part of me combined. "Good thing we at least have you to rely on, eh?" he smiled up at me briefly, his face was always so friendly and warm, before snapping himself back into consultant mode. That simple act of switching on and off emotions with the click of one's fingers was one I was still yet to master but, I had decided was a crucial act in surviving a career in medicine. You could be whoever you wanted to be, present yourself in any which way form but once you were in theatre there was only one thing that truly mattered. The patient. No amount of tiredness, fury or sexual tension should ever place the welfare of a patient in jeapardy. To be a doctor was to leave all of your troubles at home. But to care too much was to become too personally involved. Too attached, which could prove to be just as damaging.

"Anyway..." I gazed back up at him, flicking the invisible switch in my brain upwards, convincing myself that it was that easy to get it back to being focused. "Mr. Hill's medical records." He passed me a tablet that looked particularly small and vulnerable in his big hands.  
For a moment, everything was still and quiet, all except from my mind which was flailing uselessly and lost in its thoughts. But then, I could feel a familiar thumping sound forming in my ears and all I could think about was this: how much I hated Dominic Copeland for leaving me to deal with this alone.

Xxx

"Phoenix..." I was pacing towards him, a wheelchair trailing a smooth padding noise across the floor which I left parked by the end of the bed.

He was sat with his body at a sloped angle and a laptop perched on his lap. Earphones hung down loosely from his ears and his eyes were wide and smiling as if with admiration at whatever was playing on the screen in front of him. A DVD rested in a diagonal position by his left side, with a title so captivating, had it not been for his costume which remained hung up neatly by his bed side, I would have labelled it the most enchanting item in the room, which was hardly fair competition when lined up against the routine, yearly inhibitors. The painful unswerviness of the Drip Stand and the dull glow given off of the Snow White Bedding, that always there just waiting to become splattered with blood stains or drenched in patient sweat.

The stillness in his body and the engrossed expression on his face told me that he hadn't heard me call his name and it wasn't until I inched myself a few centre metres closer, perhaps overcastting the light reflecting onto the laptop screen that I found him looking up at me, eyes twinkling and startled.

"Oh sorry," he said pulling out an earphone from his left ear before rubbing wearily at his reddened cheeks. It was as if he had been in his own little world, some kind of Safe Place and I felt a slight pang of guilt ripple inside my chest knowing that I was about to pull him away from it. "You've caught me at the end of Genhis Khan."

I smiled down at him, mouth barely curling up at the edges. "Listen, I hate to do this to you but it may be best if you turn that off for a minute."

"Of course," he said nodding and closing the laptop screen gently shut.

"Right so uhmm..." I paused, swallowing hard. Why were words always the hardest thing to get right? It made open heart surgery seem like a walk in the park when it came to the technical, gritty stuff.

"I've just been looking at your full medical records and... I think I may know what's been causing your symptoms."

He looked away from me, curling the earphone cord loosely around the three of his middle fingers.

"And..." I encouraged gently "I think you may do too."

He remained there, still and distant, emitting nothing but a sound, a strangled groan through closed lips that was so raw sounding it prickled my ears. "I... I should have told you."

I simply shrugged.

"I realise this is probably going to sound really stupid but... when I'm in the costumes, when I'm... doing these re-enactments I just feel..."

I swallowed hard as I heard his voice begin to tremble, biting at the side of my cheek to keep myself collected. It was not my place to cry but the more I tried to tell myself this, the more I became aware of this growing mass in the back of my throat. "It's okay, I get it."This was all that I could manage before I felt my throat begin to tighten. It was as if Life itself was wrapping its own hands around me. Devouring every inch.

"How can you? It's pathetic."

"No it's not. There's nothing wrong with being scared." He wouldn't even look up at me. Didn't even stir. Instead the words just seemed to roll over him like Time, like Light, like wind blowing across the sky sucking us all in and pushing us further towards the end.

"But... you don't understand. I got lucky the first time. I survived it didn't I? I... was in remission for two years. There was no apparent sign of it coming back. I had convinced myself that I had finally got my old life back and even better I was able to draw a line and reinvent myself. Not care what other people thought. And I was happy or at least I thought... I should've known it was only a matter of time before everything turned to shit again."

"Hey, come on..." I was gently easing my hands behind his beck, encouraging him to pull himself back up. During the confrontation, he had allowed himself to sink further and further into the pillow. "You can't think like that. Not until we know for sure. And we can't be sure of anything until we've finished doing all of the tests." I swallowed hard in an attempt to rid myself of the lump that I could feel was still present in the back of my throat, instead releasing a terrible gulping sound. A sound of desperation perhaps.

I walked back over towards the chair, that just remained there idle and still, inprinted with some kind of unique design that could never be truly visible to the naked eye, but I knew it was there. It was if pain had moulded and shaped the seat of the chair. It was such an unnatural shape. There were scratch marks on the base of the chair, or was I just imagining them? Consultants and nurses struggling to get their patients to the scan rooms out of what? Fear? Shame? Rebellion? What did it even matter.

"Well I'm hardly going to turn out to be pregnant am I?" He was smiling up at me, tears tainting the natural glow in his eyes.

I was patting the chair, gesturing for him to shift himself into it, as well as taking in the firm stiffness of its structure that felt somewhat to foreign to me. How much I wanted to succumb my weight, just let my entire self go and be held by something that secure and unbreakable right now.

Before I began wheeling him over for his CT, I heard him mutter something. Something that was completely audible but remaining only as fragments by my ears.

I stopped wheeling, allowing him to repeat the words. He was fiddling with his identification band that had been fastened tightly around his wrist, twisting it back and forth, as far as it would reach either way.

 _"_ _Don't leave me please."_

I couldn't promise him that I wouldn't. I couldn't even promise myself that I would try. Instead I just allowed myself to fall to my knees in front of him, one hand gripping onto the armrest for balance the other holding onto his right hand. And then I squeezed it, whatever that meant, closing my hand tighter and taking in his strength.


End file.
